Many passengers, however, are still stuck on board as it will take hours for the more than four-thousand people to disembark.

One woman says getting **off** the ship was the best part of this cruise.

“It was terrible. Toilets didn’t work. No air, no electricity. People are on edge. I think they weren’t telling us everything that was happening to us.”

Finally — dry land.

Thousands of people are now heading home after a cruise catastrophe.

They endured several days of deplorable conditions on board what was supposed to be a luxury trip from Galveston, Texas to the Caribbean.

Last week, about 31-hundred passengers and more than one-thousand crewmembers set out on the Carnival Triumph.

But on Sunday, an engine room fire cut off electricity, leaving Triumph…not so triumphant.

The ship was adrift, floating, powerless, listing.

Passengers were able to send out pictures and tales of sleeping in hallways and on deck, with feces and urine spilling out of toilets that were not working…sloshing across floors and seeping through walls.

They were hot, they were cold, they were miserable.

Apparently there was one disaster after another.

For example, problems with tug boat lines breaking certainly didn’t help the situation.

Triumph was originally supposed to dock in Mexico, but then rerouted to Alabama.

Many people describe the trip as **hell** on the high seas.

A reporter at the scene tonight in Alabama says you can smell sewage from the dock.

Carnival says it will compensate passengers for their trouble.

The cruise line will give each passenger $500, a free flight home, a full refund for the trip and credit for another cruise.